The fact that the overlapping generations of the ruling class in Nigeria have had to fight ASUU should tell people that it is the same people who have been running our affairs; they are the same interests, if not directly the same people, that have been running our affairs; people who just want to take us to Washington and hand our fortune over to them.
Author: National Record
Billions of people have been left without social protection and are at grave risk from the devastating health and the economic effects of this crisis. Now is the time for global cooperation to fund social protection for all. The world cannot turn its back on those most in need now or in reconstruction of an inclusive and resilient future.
This is why the ITUC is calling for a New Social Contract – the ILO Centenary Declaration is a solid foundation for this
Fifty-two years ago, Martin Luther King, in a speech to striking sanitation workers on the eve of his assassination reminded the world that there is dignity in all labour. Today, the virus has similarly highlighted the always essential role of the working heroes of this pandemic. People who are usually invisible, unconsidered, undervalued, even ignored. Health and care workers, cleaners, supermarket cashiers, transport staff – too often numbered among the ranks of the working poor and the insecure.
Today the denial of dignity to these, and to millions of others, stand as a symbol of past policy failures and our future responsibilities.
“CACOVID is already setting up a 310 bed isolation center at Sani Abacha stadium in Kano. We are extending that capacity by another 150 beds at the Abubakar Imam Urology Centre in Kano, which is being converted into an isolation center now. These two centers will be operational pending the final validation by the Infection Prevention and Control team, which we expect will be completed in the coming days.”
An open manifestation of the crackdown occurred on the night of Sunday, 2nd February 2020 when, at about 9pm, the state secretariat of NLC was sealed by security agencies on the orders of the state government on the allegation that the building needed to undergo proper integrity test and therefore must be closed for officials to carry out the exercise.
The world of work can hardly be the same again. Smart work or hardworking? Homework or industrial work? Formal or informal work? We live to work or work to live? ILO centenary last year agonized about all the above questions but it takes an ubiquitous virus to compel urgent answers today.
If I can go back to this issue of corruption; you see, people who have cornered so much public money for themselves have reproduced themselves such that if you jailed somebody who was a governor, there are so many other people that he has put money in their hands to continue this agenda of stealing. So it doesn’t change anything fundamentally because they country belongs to them, and all of that.
For the avoidance of doubt, these activities normally take the forms of public lectures, rallies, peaceful protests and solidarity marches. But, this year, for reasons that are not unconnected with the unanticipated global prevalence of a tiny invisible enemy in the guise of Covid 19, all the above listed traditional modes of operation, would be painfully modified or completely punctuated.
The invasion of the corona virus pandemic has altered the world the way we know it. Our world will never remain the same again. The contemporary world of work is in dire straits. There are even greater fears on the future of work. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has reported that the COVID-19 social lockdown measures have affected almost 2.7 billion workers worldwide. This represents around 81 per cent of the world’s workforce. In these circumstances, businesses across a range of economic sectors are facing catastrophic losses. The threats to operations and solvency, among smaller enterprises, make millions of workers vulnerable to income loss and layoffs.
“In making the foregoing categorical testimony against just the security personnel, one is not in any way, trying to shield the Kano state government from taking its due blame, far from it. On the contrary, reports from the fields by some independent observers, clearly implicated the government and its high ranking health officials, in the shoddy arrangements we saw, in trying to contain the rampaging virus.”